Extra Credit: Teach your children well about STEM

Parents can play a key role in swelling the ranks of students pursuing careers in science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) fields, according to a new UW study published in Psychological Science.

Increasing interest in STEM fields is crucial to developing a strong 21st century U.S. workforce, but interest in science and math begins to wane in high school when students choose not to take advanced courses in those subjects, according to the study.

While most efforts to change that have focused on things schools can do to increase student interest in STEM classes, researchers at UW demonstrated the influence parents can have.

They conducted an experiment involving 181 high school students in which materials promoting the importance of math and science were sent to their parents in the fall of their 10th grade year. Another group of parents received no materials.